Department of Energy Ignoring Cleanup Plan That Saves $18B
A massive Department of Energy environment cleanup in Washington State that’s years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget, could save up to $18 billion if it followed recommendations by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, something it has yet to do.
The nuclear waste cleanup at the Hanford Site in Washington is “one of the largest and most expensive environmental cleanup projects in the world,” a July 2022 GAO report stated.
Weapons-grade nuclear materials were produced for decades at the 586-square-mile campus until the late 1980s, when the DOE began cleanup of hazardous and radioactive waste.
The waste created as a byproduct of producing nuclear weapons includes 54 million gallons stored in 177 large underground waste storage tanks. Federal and state environmental laws require that the waste be treated before it’s disposed.
The current cleanup plan calls for a Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant, which has been under construction since 2000, and includes creating several waste treatment facilities, including a facility to vitrify — or convert — all of Hanford’s high-level waste and a separate facility to vitrify about 60 percent of its low activity waste. The plan is also looking at creating a second vitrification facility for the rest of the low activity waste.
In May 2017, GAO reported that “experts believed that much of Hanford’s supplemental [low activity waste] could be safely grouted — that is, immobilized in a concrete mixture.”
The office stated in January 2021 “that DOE could save up to $18 billion by filling the closed tanks with grout and leaving them in place, rather than exhuming them for disposal elsewhere, as the state of Washington may require.”
Who wouldn’t want to save $18 billion? The GAO suggested the DOE seeks stakeholders’ buy-in to the decision-making process.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case and GAO reported that “DOE faces challenges in engaging stakeholders, including local, regional, and national entities, as well as tribal governments.”
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